I was asked to explain my reservations with using SSMS as a front end.
The first issue is concerning our data quality: why are we letting bad data into a database at all? Speak with the data warehouse group to get a straightforward perspective into the level of workarounds required because of what we let into our databases. Data quality is a measurable Six Sigma metric which I discussed in the Data Integrity class I gave a few months ago. See http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B31080_01/doc/owb.102/b28223/concept_data_quality.htm#BABGGFGC
The second issue is what constitutes a safe way to modify data: do we sincerely believe SSMS is a good application front end? Most data “corruption” is because regular people make a simple mistake in their sql. Like data quality, we can also use how often ad hoc updates are run in production as maturity indicator. Imagine someone running ad hoc sql which updates your bank account…. That is not good!